Ask Lemmy

this was how I got my wow addiction back in 2005

Once I ended up in a situation where I was required to be present in the office but didn't actually have any tasks to perform (all work on our project had been halted by some patent lawsuit).

So I simply talked to my manager and asked if it'd be OK if I used the time I had to sit there with nothing to do to work on open source projects and after some initial confusion he agreed to this so that's how I then spent my working days (until the work they actually paid me for eventually got going again).

Mastubate in the toilet like every other sane person ?

I often bring a sewing project to work.

Learn how to code

When I work in office settings I usually set pace based on what I need to accomplish, and use any extra time to do proper reviews of my work.

I wrote a book. Always looked busy. Was great!

Nursing student / surgical tech here. I do a lot of my studying at work when I'm not scrubbed in to a surgery. All our text books are digital, so I can whip my phone out at any time to get some reading done, especially if I can pop a headphone in and use the text-to-speech features to listen to them - I'll do that while I'm restocking supplies / pulling the next days cases / cleaning / checking for out-dates. Surgery schedule is always feast or famine, so when we're not occupied with patient care there are a hundred other ways to keep busy - but most of those don't really require thinking, so time for school.

Paying me to poop is also a fantastic use of my employer's income. There's a crazy correlation with the amount of busy work pushed on us vs the severity of constipation that shows up out of the blue. Sometimes it just takes a half hour to drop a log, ya know?? 🤷‍♂️

Would you be able to create even more work for yourself and get paid more for doing it? Like suggesting things to be done, or doing side projects?

At a customer service job I'd read whole books in the browser. Just keep the window small and it looks pretty inconspicuous.

Now I work from home so I look at Lemmy and such on my phone.

I have a hard rule of never playing video games on the clock because that's a slippery slope.

I'm a nerd who plays and GMs tabletop RPGs with friends. I often use slack time at work to build out my campaigns and characters.

Your seeing it for me.

That and ebooks/royal road/audiobooks via phone. Just make it look kinda like work and you should be good.

Alternatively, try to learn something new. Theres a lot of online resources out there!

Browsing lemmy and watching TV shows / youtube.

I worked a factory job for several years that had nearly unrestricted internet and the ability to install programs. There's a LOT of options here depending on your technical skill and what you're able to get away with. One of my favs was setting up a remote connection to my home network so I could work on project there without much fuss on the work computers and was easy to just close the connection if needed.

Also games. I played a lot of games... even designed some with all the time we had.

Learning web development was my most productive though; I was able to contribute to the company and got promoted to IT which launched my career to where I am now.

There is always more documentation to update sadly.
There is always old customer data to remove. I am currently working on a plan to remove the vxlan and firewall sub interfaces for a customer that was lost 3 years ago.

Any way you can learn new skills or get certs while you work? Take on a project to put on your resume? Help others? Hopefully, you will find something that challenges you or make work more appealing during your day?

• see if there's literally anything else you can do to improve or polish what you just worked on
• set if there's anyone else that might need help with their work or who you can mentor
• learn new things you can put on your resume it that will help you in your job
• learn stuff in general that isn't directly work related, but maybe related to your next job/what you would like to work with

Chess puzzles. Reading about my hobbies.

When I was still working in an office I used to listen to a lot of podcasts.

suduko?

Playing games on my phone

Reading books

Read on kiwix. Browse the archive.

I listen to podcasts or audiobooks, I often read from an eReader so from the outside can appear work related. But I also do a lot of origami so I don't know.

I was lucky enough to be able to keep working from home after the quarantines of 2020, but when I used to be in the office, I'd find a YouTube video, make it full screen, then on a second monitor I'd click and drag another window on top of it to obscure it. Then I'd hover over the taskbar to bring up the preview, and watch the video on that.

If anyone was passing by, I'd just have to move my mouse to get rid of the preview, and it looked like I was looking at important business stuff. Even if I didn't realize someone was getting close, the preview is pretty small, so they never noticed it, though it helped that I worked in an office full of computer-illiterate people.

Research something non-work related (usually owls)

Plan a vacation or home project

Study music/theory/plugins/production or play on my mini keyboard

Make friends with other contractors outside of my company

Go out and enjoy the fall weather

Read an ebook or enjoy an audiobook. I started Discworld. I'm down 4 so far out of 41 I think it is.

Basically stuff I'd want to do anyway that requires little or no equipment. Down time is my time. The only thing that stinks is an open office with no real privacy. People don't seem to care, but it makes it less enjoyable for me. I've been here 2 years now and no one has ever said anything.

When I'm done I go home. Benefits of being self-employed.

This wasn't ever much of an issue in my previous job either. Work fills the time given for it. If there's literally nothing to do then I'd browse reddit/Lemmy or watch YouTube videos.

I play chess on lichess and chess.com

Richii mahjong phone app